Diabolical Masquerade

Many a musician from a well-known band has formed a "side project",
and the results of such exercises, even discounting the ones that
never formally record, are chancy at best.
Often the project is too closely tied to the main band, or is
simply really not worthwhile in the first place.
Thankfully, this is not the case with Diabolical Masquerade,
the mostly one-man project led by
Katatonia's Anders Nyström
and at times featuring guests such as
Dan Swanö.
Nyström has played doom and now melancholic rock with Katatonia
and old-school death metal with
Bloodbath,
but Diabolical Masquerade is completely unlike either of those
two bands, instead being a prime symphonic horror-laced black
metal outfit.
The album reviewed here, 1998's Nightwork, is a grandiose,
accomplished album, clearly black metal in structure but with
rich orchestrations and numerous nods to thrash and traditional
metal as well, all the more impressive considering that Nyström
played virtually all the instruments as well as providing suitably
extreme black metal vocals.
Truly an excellent release.

While the first three albums are of the more conventional variety,
Death's Design is a different beast, a true horror movie
soundtrack (though unfortunately the movie itself was never
completed), with 20 movements each broken down into several shorter
interludes that overall comprise the 61 tracks listed.
Certainly one of the most ambitious extreme metal releases in some
time.

Death's Design turned out to be the swansong for the band,
as Nyström decided to end the project in September of 2004.